


It's a Beautiful Night

by khasael



Series: Hale and Hearty [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adrenaline, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Close Calls, Ignores S3B, Impromptu Decisions, M/M, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1398775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khasael/pseuds/khasael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because they're all almost <i>used to</i> fighting against the Creature of the Week and assorted other Bad Guys, doesn't mean it doesn't get Stiles's heart rate going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Beautiful Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Byaghro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byaghro/gifts).



> Part 1 of a 6 part series. Byaghro provided the inspiration for part 5, and a coworker who played a particular song a LOT in the kitchen where I was working last year is indirectly responsible for parts 1-4. This utterly ignores S3B, because it was conceived before then. (ETA: There will quite possibly be more than these 6 parts, but I couldn't tell you how soon.)
> 
> I thought this was going to be some 5k fic. Not 6 fics, totaling 35k. I should really know better, by now. Much thanks to Groolover for betaing the whole series.
> 
> Earlier fics are lower-rated, but we'll hit explicit before the end, no worries :)

This is, by Stiles's rough count, the forty-seventh time he's stared Death in the face since his sophomore year.

This particular version of Death is currently a lot easier on the eyes than some of the ones in the past. Still, Stiles has also seen the true face of the creature wearing this slowly-morphing mask, and that thing is butt-ugly. Also, it can't seem to figure out whether it wants to be impersonating a man or a woman, and the stressed-out part of his brain that's been looking at the Gender Studies courses in the college catalogue for the last few weeks wants to have a discussion about gender fluidity.

The more rational part of his mind wants to kill this fucking thing. With fire. Iron. Holy water. Or whatever the hell method ends up being effective, seeing as how Deaton was less than helpful this time around, and it's Stiles and Lydia who've been trying to come up with the answers. They've got sort of a mixed bag thing going, in that regard. This creature is sort of wendigo-like, with a splash of empusa, with a little face dancer thrown in for good measure.

"I think it's kind of tired," Scott whispers out of the corner of his mouth as they all sort of creep a little closer to the creature. And Stiles loves the guy, he really does, they've been best bros practically forever, but damn it, doesn't Scott know better than to _say_ things like that out loud, by now?

The thing snaps its head up at that, utterly defying Scott's assumption as it sprints across the distance between it and the entrance to the cave they've figured is its hiding place. It's just as fast as the werewolves, if not faster, but it stops right as it gets to the entrance. It does more than just stop, actually. It bounces off an invisible barrier, like it's a werewolf hitting a line of mountain ash.

"Thank you, Lydia," Stiles murmurs, already reaching into the bag slung over his shoulder. The thing looks dazed as it gets up, but that doesn't mean it's not dangerous. It just means that it wasn't expecting a line of salt and quartz chips scattered in front of its front door.

Actually, no. It doesn't look dazed anymore. It looks pissed. So pissed that it no longer cares about trying to keep one of its human-looking faces in place. Now it's all long pointy teeth, skin that looks a little rotted, large sunken eyes, and hair that's mostly smoke and flame. Definitely not so pretty anymore.

And it's looking right at Stiles.

"Oh shit," he breathes, just as the thing starts moving toward him. It's not as fast as it was just a minute ago, but it's still way too fast for Stiles to have a hope of outrunning it. Still, instinct kicks in, and he's stumbling backward even as he raises the iron fireplace poker with some sort of vine Lydia had procured wrapped around it, brandishing it as best he can.

Maybe he should have taken up baseball, instead of lacrosse.

The thing's practically on top of him, and Stiles has a moment of clarity in which he knows it's going to rip out his throat, sit on top of him and drink every last drop of blood from his body before it turns on the nearest of his friends for a second course. He can even smell rotting flesh and decay and something coppery that's probably blood, even as he starts the downward swing of his weapon. He hopes like hell that he'll at least make contact and wound the creature pretty severely before he dies. If he can save his friends, it might make it—well, it won't make it _okay_ , really, but it will at least sort of make the whole situation a little better.

He gets maybe ten degrees into his trajectory when the poker gets ripped out of his hands. Stiles only barely registers it's happening before something wraps around his wrist, grip so tight the bones in that joint grind together and send a flare of pain up his forearm and down into his hand, and then he's sort of flying through the air for just a second before he lands on his back. Hard.

"What--?" he wheezes, all the air that had been in his lungs forcibly knocked out of him, and a snarled " _Scott, catch!_ " cuts off anything else he might have tried to say. Things are moving quickly, and it's not just having the wind knocked out of him that makes everything a little blurry. Normal human eyes can't quite track all the movement going on right now in this patch of forest, but Stiles thinks he sees someone toss the poker off to someone else in the split second before something that's hissing wildly slams into the body that's half-covering Stiles. He has just enough time to see glowing blue eyes squeeze shut before they and their owner go flying off to the side. There's a squelching sound, then a cacophony of howls and growls, followed by a sickening crunch.

And then everything goes quiet, and Stiles is both terrified about what might have just happened, and desperate to know what it was. He manages to scramble to his hands and knees, looking around frantically. Scott's standing over the body of whatever that creature was, iron poker still in hand, his eyes still burning red. The thing's head is smashed in, and Stiles sees one of Allison's arrows sticking out of its chest—one of the ones with the iron tip that he and Lydia had approved this morning. There's some disgusting yellow goo oozing from both wounds, hissing as it hits the damp ground, and Stiles plans to stay far away from that. He can hear people yelling from an indeterminable distance, voices that sound like Isaac and Lydia and Allison. Which means the only person unaccounted for is—Derek.

Stiles spots him after a moment, his body curled up on itself, black leather and dark denim hard to see in the shadows cast by a tree with low branches. He looks up at Scott, who's still looking a little too Alpha to focus on much else but the carcass at his feet, and crawls his way over to the form crumpled underneath the tree, wincing at the way his wrist twinges when he puts weight on it.

"Derek? Hey, Derek?" Stiles calls, kneeling at Derek's side. He's not moving, and Stiles feels his stomach twist at the thought that maybe this is finally it for him, Derek's last face-off with Death, the losing battle finally here. He rolls Derek over onto his back, needing to see if there's some injury they can maybe fix, and Derek groans softly, his eyes fluttering open. They're the normal greenish-hazel kaleidoscope Stiles has come to know over the last two years, lit up by the moonlight up above them, but they focus quickly, staring up at Stiles. "Oh, dude, thank God. You're alive." He breathes a sigh of relief and sits back on his heels as Derek sits up on his own. So that's everyone accounted for. Good. He can maybe focus on trying to get his heart to stop attempting to pound its way out of his chest.

"Where's--?" Derek starts, but he answers his own question with a quick look to his left. "Everyone okay?" he asks, and Stiles sort of marvels at the question, a sign of how far Derek's come since that day he and Scott met him in the woods, when he didn't care about anyone else's well-being. Then again, he'd just buried half his sister's body, the only family he'd thought he had left, so Stiles can maybe understand that a little. Still, the personal growth had been slow to show; the fortress of walls around Derek's emotions had taken quite a while to come down, even a little. "Stiles!" he barks, when he doesn't get an answer. "Is everyone okay? Are _you_ okay?"

"Yeah, no, sorry, everyone's fine. I mean, the other three are still on their way back, but I've heard their voices, and the thing never got close to where they were stationed."

"But you're okay?" Derek's eyes flash blue, and Stiles blinks, a little startled and confused, because it's not like he's done anything to piss Derek off.

"Yeah. Which, thanks, by the way. I'd probably be monster food, if it weren't for you basically throwing me out of its path. I'll take a little pain and bruising if it means I don't get gnawed on and drained of my blood." Really, it's an acceptable compromise, especially considering how damn sure Stiles had been that he had only seconds to live.

"You—" Whatever Derek says next is cut off by the rest of the group showing up, Isaac taking the iron rod and doing his own poking at the slowly-dissolving body of the creature they've dispatched, while Allison ducks under Scott's arm and gives him a hug, which seems to calm him pretty immediately. Lydia's standing off to the side, warily looking at what Isaac's doing. Stiles is pretty sure her curiosity is warring with her sense of "ew, gross." He personally feels he got a good enough look at it just a minute ago. No need to join Isaac in his poke-the-body fun.

There's a bit of talking things over, going over a plan for checking the area and making sure the whatever-it-was doesn't have any friends of offspring hiding out in the forest. They're all ninety-nine percent sure the creature was alone here in Beacon Hills, but it's still better to make sure, rather than deal with that one percent. Allison and Lydia head off through the woods, flanked by Scott and Isaac, who've promised to howl if they find anything. Now that Scott's figured out how to do that without sounding like a sickly cat being strangled, it's a reliable form of communication with the rest of the pack. Stiles can't necessarily tell all of their howls apart every time, but he knows they can.

"You're really okay?" Derek asks as they head back in the direction of Stiles's Jeep. He drove in alone, as all the wolves had run and the girls had been in Allison's car, but Stiles is glad of the company.

"Yeah, I told you, I'm fine." He's not, really. But he's not seriously injured, he's not dying, and he's not having a panic attack over very nearly dying back there, before Derek stepped in and...and put himself between Stiles and danger. Again. It's far from the first time it's happened, and Stiles finds they do it for each other a fair amount. Hell, Derek put himself between Stiles and the Kanima back when they were barely even civil, and Stiles had reciprocated with keeping Derek's stupidly heavy, muscled body afloat for two goddamn hours. The day-after soreness had made every lacrosse practice—even those when Coach was feeling particularly sadistic and ordered suicide sprints—seem like a trip to the day spa.

"You..."

"I what?"

Derek stops walking, reaches out and puts a hand on Stiles's elbow to get him to stop as well. Derek just looks at him for a second, and Stiles feels like there's an awful lot of analysis going on behind those bunched-up eyebrows before Derek sighs. "One, that's a direct lie, you're not fine. Two, your heart rate's still up. High. What's wrong?"

Stiles shakes his head. "I don't know." And he doesn't, not really. Some of it's the flood of adrenaline still in his system, he knows that. But he feels restless in a way that isn't just due to that simple fact. He lets his head fall back in exasperation and just looks up at the stars for a few seconds. They're brighter than he's ever noticed them being, and maybe it's that they're far enough from the town to be away from the effects of light pollution, but maybe it's that he's fucking _alive_ , which sounds like such a simple thing. But it's not anymore. It hasn't been a simple thing to take for granted for almost two years now. "I just..."

"What?"

Stiles blows a long breath through pursed lips and raises his head to look at Derek. "I have no idea," he admits. "I feel wound up, even worse than when I've had way too much Adderall, or that one time I thought Bawls and Amp on top of Adderall was something I could handle and I made Scott hang out with me for five hours listening to see if my heart was going to explode."

"I remember that," Derek says dryly, and Stiles barks a laugh at the expression on his face. Right. He'd almost forgotten that Derek had shown up for the last two of those hours, harassed by Scott into staying and helping him listen. They'd all been a little sleep-deprived and over-stressed at the time. Fucking goblins, if Stiles remembers correctly.

"I guess...I guess I feel like it's impossible to just drive home, shower, and go to bed. Seriously, I've never felt less like sleeping. Except, well..."

"The whole Nemeton thing," Derek says, his voice soft.

"Yeah, that." That had...taken a while to deal with, actually, and is not Stiles's favorite subject in the world. None of them particularly like discussing it. "And the Adderall and energy drink fiasco. But I mean it, there's no way I can just go home and climb into bed and go to sleep."

"So don't."

Stiles eyes Derek for a moment, then makes a noise in the back of his throat. "Yeah? And do what, exactly? I'm not going to the rec center to use the gym. And there's no way I can sit and try to concentrate on a book or movie or something."

"Go for a drive." Derek clears his throat. "I do that, sometimes. When I feel restless."

Stiles can't help but smile, just a little. He can just picture Derek speeding around in the dark, well and truly violating the posted speed limits, probably brooding and listening to some sort of angsty, angry music. But he can't deny that it doesn't sound like a bad idea. There's a definite appeal there, actually. The night's fucking gorgeous, now that he's noticing it. There's a light breeze that's cool and comfortable, and it smells like...like...well, he doesn't know, but it's awesome. He'd call it "moonlight," but he's walking with a freaking werewolf, and he doesn't feel like getting shit for the description for the rest of his life. Which is a thing he has, come to think of it. He has a 'rest of his life,' which was something that was in question twenty minutes ago. Maybe a drive would be perfect, with the windows down just a little. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Derek starts walking again, back towards the Jeep, and Stiles almost doesn't hear the follow-up. "Kind of like now."

It's pretty typical of Stiles's general impulse-control issues that he opens his mouth before thinking, blurting "Then come with me," at Derek as he follows along after.

Derek falters in his stride, then looks back over his shoulder as Stiles catches up. His eyebrows are doing one of their up-high dances, which always sort of amuses Stiles. It's like Derek's eyebrows are their own beings, prone to interpretive dance, and who occasionally do a really great disappearing trick when Derek's in beta form. "Are you serious?"

The thing is, Stiles _is_. "Yeah. Come with me. I feel like I need to be moving, and that can be done just as well in the Jeep as walking around. And, well, I'd look less crazy talking to you than if I were just talking to myself. I'd appreciate your company."

Derek just looks at him even longer, his eyebrows somehow managing to go higher still, like he's truly surprised that's not coming back as a lie. Which, no, he should know that by now. Maybe Stiles doesn't call Derek up and invite him to ballgames or that sort of thing, but they spend time with each other now and then, even just the two of them. Sometimes they even do it without the imminent threat of some creature of the week lurking around town wanting to kill or use the werewolves for whatever supernatural reason it may have. Derek's fallen asleep on Stiles's bed while Stiles has been messing around on the computer, and Stiles has passed out on Derek's couch a number of times—sometimes, apparently, mid-sentence on especially late nights. They're comfortable around each other these days, and Stiles is glad to have someone else around who can hold his own in a snark-off.

It's another few moments before Derek finally responds, and when he does, it's with a quiet, "Yeah, okay," that has Stiles grinning for some reason he can't name. But it doesn't really matter, because Derek's grinning back, just a little bit, and this feels good, like the right decision. Just get in the Jeep and go for a drive, celebrate being alive, the awesomeness of the way everything feels right now, just go and _be_ , without thinking too much about it.


End file.
